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Friday, August 28, 2009

A lesson in not overthinking

First, I forgot to take a picture at my one and only cache today...so I'll take a moment to brag. Above is the coveted map of smilies. It shows 90 (of 117) cache finds in the Orlando metro area. I remember when I used to look at this map and see only three smilies. Unfortunately, this map is far less impressive when you see all that caches I haven't found. Whatever, I'm making progress.

My one and only cache (which I did not personally find) was an attempt at FTF. I was debating how late I was going to work when I got the cache-published e-mail. It was only four miles away, so I packed up my stuff and hit the road. When I arrived at the cache location I was greeted by fellow geocachers, the Orlando Holleys. It was nice to finally put faces with the name. Up until now I've known them only by the miniature holly stickers they leave at every cache they visit.

We looked high and low, in the bushes and under the pipes. There were two sucky parts to this cache: 1) The location was near a fence and we couldn't tell which side of the fence it was on, so we had no choice but to check both; 2) The cache was under power lines, so the gpses (plural of gps?) were wonky beyond belief.

The cache was rated a 2 for difficulty, so I was thinking nano, or something decently camo'd, but not too well camo'd. After 45 minutes of looking, one of the Holleys spotted the completely uncamo'd bright orange waterproof match container perched within the fence. Why it took us 45 minutes to find it, I will never know. We just overthought the difficulty rating. And we didn't recognize the hider, so we immediately distrusted their ability to take good coordinates, lol.

Despite the interference of the power lines, my coords were spot on.

Oh well. Yet again, it is clear to me why I geocache. It really isn't about what you find, or who even finds it, it's just fun to look. And it's even more fun to look with other people, whether you know them or not. I have yet to meet a rude or unfriendly geocacher. When you cross paths with other cachers, no proper introduction is needed. We already have a common goal and geo-tales to swap.

Ok, you can cut the weepy violin music now.

PS. The Orlando Holleys are the proud owners of the nut/bolt cache I found a few weeks ago. Clever, clever cachers.